Spoken speech is one thing, written speech is quite another… The moment “talk” is put into print you recognize that it is not what it was when you heard it; you perceive that an immense something has disappeared from it. That is its soul. You have nothing but a dead carcass left on your hands.”
– Mark Twain, on the Spoken Word vs. the Written Word
In King’s article, “Godzilla vs. Post-Colonial,” he goes to great lengths to discuss the dangers of assumptions, specifically the ones that our Western, European cultures have informed and equipped us with from the beginning, so much so that it is now integrated and deeply rooted into our perspectives, academically and otherwise. He rejects the term “postcolonial,” on the basis that the word itself is situated so that it asserts a superior culture, “organiz(ing) the literature progressively suggesting that there is both progress and improvement” (Robinson 185), and “assum(ing) that the struggle between guardian and ward is the catalyst for contemporary Native literature (Robinson 185). Additionally, and perhaps, “worst of all, the idea of post-colonial writing effectively cuts us (Natives) off from our traditions, traditions that were in place before colonialism ever became a question” (Robinson 185). He offers instead, terms such as “associational,” “tribal,” “polemic,” and “interfusional,” not as a comprehensive or exclusive vocabulary, but more to suggest “vantage points from which we can see a particular literary landscape” (Robinson 186).
Robinson’s story, then, is what King might call interfusional literature. Even within the constraints of the written English language, Robinson is able to successfully construct an oral voice, creating a need for readers to break outside of the barriers they have grown accustomed to, and read the story out loud.
The first time I read Robinson’s “Coyote Makes A Deal With England,” I struggled through it, silently, as I read it in my head. I noticed that I automatically kept trying to rearrange the fragments and fill in words, in an attempt to fix and maintain some sort of formal grammatical structure. It was incredibly difficult to find a fluid rhythm, because the syntax did not follow any kind of format I have been taught to recognize. I realized on several occasions that I could make it through an entire page and have no idea what I had just read, so I would go back to the beginning and try again, repeating this frustrating cycle until I finally reached the end of the chapter, and still, more or less, did not have a comprehensive understanding of its context or significance.
After this slow, and admittedly painful, endeavor, my next reading experience was a complete night-and-day difference. As I read the same story aloud, all of a sudden, it was as if the words came to life, and each syllable and moment had some kind of profound, emphatic significance. I became aware of the flow of the rhythm that similar and repetitive lines would create, a pulse one could only notice in oral conversation.
Do you know what the Angel was?
Do you know?
The Angel, God’s Angel, you know.
They sent that to Coyote.
And Angel flew and get to Coyote (Robinson 66).
This passage, for example, reads very awkwardly from the perspective of Western academic literature, but when read aloud, carries a resonant cadence. Additionally, many times over, Robinson uses the words “and,” “they,” and “so” to begin sentences that remain incomplete, fragmented lines. However, when read out loud, these words aid in maintaining a colloquial tone, wherein the audience can engage in what sounds like a natural conversation with the speaker. Unlike with my first reading, the grammatical errors – or rather, what we have been taught to recognize as the proper, formal structure – did not raise red flags that completely hindered my understanding of the story, but instead, added to my overall interaction with it, drawing from its rich oral heritages. By capturing both discourses within a story, Robinson is able to create a medium wherein the differences between oral and written communication are emphasized, and yet, seem to work in complementary tandem with each other.
I think that while Robinson does an excellent job in recreating the aspect of storytelling and performance within written words, there is still a large portion of this story that remains inaccessible to the non-Native reader. Personally, I have no background in First Nations cultural practices, myths, or stories, and even with the oral reading, I still had great confusion surrounding the character of Coyote. Although it had more to do with my individual lack of knowledge than clarity from the author, it was difficult for me to interpret many of the contextual cues and references that would have been more familiar and significant to a more learned individual, King makes reference to this inaccessibility as well, stating that “non-Natives may, as readers, come to an association with these communities, but they remain, always, outsiders” (King 189).
Works Cited:
Ferraro, Vincent and Palmer, Kathryn. “Differences Between Oral and Written Communication.” Mount Holyoke, n.d., https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/speech/differences.htm. Web. 31 Oct. 2016.
King, Thomas. “Godzilla vs. Post-Colonial.” Unhomely States: Theorizing English-Canadian Postcolonialism. Peterbough, ON: Broadview, 2004. 183- 190. Web. 04 April 2013.
Robinson, Harry. Living by Stories: a Journey of Landscape and Memory. Ed. Wendy Wickwire. Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2005. Print.
Twain, Mark, ed. David van Alstyne. “Mark Twain on the Spoken Word vs. the Written Word.” Welcome to David Van Alstyne’s Growing Collection of Pages, n.d., http://www.davidvanalstyne.com/pg-marktwainspokenvswritten.html. 31 Oct. 2016.